Author: isilwentari

Well, it’s been TEN YEARS! Ten years! I started this blog January 4th, 2008! And this little milestone coincides with H!P’s TWENTY YEAR anniversary! How insane is that!? That was not planned, but I think it’s really awesome.

And, as per usual, I COMPLETELY MISSED IT!
So let’s just make this my tenth anniversary…uh…YEAR.
(Warning: this is gonna be long and about Isilie more than idols – you’ve been warned.)

I think it very Isilie of me to have completely forgotten about the milestone of ten years of H!P blogging. I’ve missed my “anniversary” basically every single year for the past nine years. That’s pretty ridiculous. It suits my personality very much. An anecdotal example: on my birthday a few years ago, I met a friend for coffee. She was sitting at a table with a small bouquet of flowers. The first thing I said was, “Oh! Who gave you flowers?” She just burst out laughing and handed them to me.

This is one of those crosses I just kinda have to bear: whenever I encounter English in a Japanese song, it’s likely to make absolutely no grammatical sense and drive me bonkers. I have no idea what ‘A Gonna’ means. It’s so very Tsunku and in English it doesn’t make any sense.

But hey, that’s never stopped us before, has it?

It’s meant to be a kansai dialect thing, but I still don’t know what it’s supposed to mean.

Picture that has nothing to do with anything: Just thought I’d give you some Ishikawa-puppy rabu. NO idea who made this, but it’s adorable. Does anybody else remember Hey Mirai??

Momusu + puppies = massive pwn.

Cuteness overload!!

In these entries, I will write about things that I’m thinking about that don’t require a full post. I will try to make it more interesting with pics, caps, gifs and by limiting myself to 100 words or less for each thought.It’s called a ‘return’ because I frequently seem to go too long without posting, mainly because my thoughts don’t always require a full post. Well – NO MORE!

Maa-Duu began during the auditions for Morning Musume. Masaki-kins went around the room and asked the other applicants their names and where they were from. She encountered Kudo Haruka for the first time and asked her, “What’s your name?”

From that, Masaki-kins concluded that Kudo was probably a bit of a weirdo (reference).

Later on, she was happy to discover that this weirdo had also made it into the group. During their subsequent encounters, Kudo was bossy and blunt, but she was someone that Masaki really liked.

And thus a friendship, odd and cantankerous, was born.

After years of antics, possessiveness, and tsundere-pimpin’, Kudo graduated and Masaki-kins wrote a troubling blog post about it. And the speculation began. In my case, the first time I read a translation of Masaki’s blog post, I remember thinking, “Oh man, I hope she doesn’t quit.”

I think saying, “What a year!” is quite the understatement. There have been so many changes, it’s hard to know where to start. Even someone like me, who pretty much only follows Morning Musume, couldn’t help but take notice. I don’t think any group, except Tsubaki Factory is exempt from the relentless changes this year. Although they did unexpectedly get good.

Country Girls got split up and placed into other groups; Momoko finally graduated, but then Shige decided to return; Kobushi Factory got chopped from 8 to 5 without ceremony; Kuudo Harukins left us for acting; Some of the Eggs (they will always be Eggs to me) debuted with a fabulous, fabulous song.

There’s probably more, but let’s try and talk about one thing at a time, shall we? This is gonna be LONG.

The first time I ever met Ikuta Erina…ok, well, the only time I likely will ever meet her, was during the handshake portion of 2014’s New York concert.

I remember I’d just been overwhelmed by my Zukki moment and then floored by how warm and sweet Riho had been, then there was Eri-pon.

And I just froze, dumbfounded. She’s so very, very small. I’ve never seen a human that is that small. I mean, short, yes, but skinny, with a tiny face. This isn’t a criticism, by the way. It honestly shocked me. I had sort of expected BOSS and Oda to be small and gorgeous, but this level of tiny was entirely different.

Eri-pon spoke, saying, “arigatou gozaimasu” and her voice was incredibly high-pitched. I looked in her eyes as I shakily remembered to take her hand and saw that wince. She had smiled, but her eyes had that ‘I think that went badly’ wince that I kept seeing in variety shows or dvd magazines. Before I could say anything, apologize for what I’m sure was a strange, nonplussed face, I was pushed on

When Bro and I compared notes later, he said that he’d basically burst out laughing the second she spoke and he’d felt terrible, but couldn’t stop laughing. It was that high-pitched voice and the wince that you can’t un-see once you start to notice it.

Permit me a small freak-out post, even though you and I both know that everything is going to be fine.

I suppose ‘evolution’ is the word I want. But this is starting to be more than I can handle. I’m not trying to pick on AKB (although I suspect it will come across that way), but that is not a format I want for H!P. It’s not what H!P is. If H!P becomes a giant, unstable idol factory in which every group can just be shuffled at will and auditions don’t mean anything and groups that have worked hard get unceremoniously split up or the group name just suddenly disappears-